Читать книгу The Canongate Burns - Robert Burns - Страница 32

First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.

O THOU unknown, Almighty Cause

Of all my hope and fear!

In whose dread Presence, ere an hour,

Perhaps I must appear!

5 If I have wander’d in those paths

Of life I ought to shun;

As Something, loudly, in my breast,

Remonstrates I have done.

Thou know’st that Thou hast formed me,

10 With Passions wild and strong;

And list’ning to their witching voice

Has often led me wrong.

Where human weakness has come short,

Or frailty stept aside,

15 Do Thou, ALL-GOOD, for such Thou art,

In shades of darkness hide.

Where with intention I have err’d,

No other plea I have,

But, Thou art good; and Goodness still

20 Delighteth to forgive.

This was almost certainly composed while the poet was at Irvine during the winter of 1781. The original title is, according to the copy in the FCB, ‘A Prayer when fainting fits and other alarming symptoms of a pleurisy or some other dangerous disorder, which indeed still threatens me, first put Nature on the alarm’. Writing to his father, 27th December, 1781, Burns revealed his gloomy illness: ‘The weakness of my nerves has so debilitated my mind that I dare not, either review past events, or look forward into futurity; for the least anxiety, or perturbation in my breast, produces most unhappy effects on my whole frame … I am quite transported at the thought that ere long, perhaps very soon, I shall bid an eternal adieu to all the pains, & uneasiness & disquietudes of this weary life; for I assure you I am heartily tired of it’ (Letter 4). The poem is partly derived from the content of Pope’s Universal Prayer, although the form is that of the Scottish metrical psalms.